Table of Contents
The Children's Hour
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
YOU ALWAYS RETURN TO YOUR FIRST LOVE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
PART TWO
COLONY
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
PART THREE
THE NIGHT COLONY
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
CONTACT DOUGLAS CLEGG
BOOKS BY DOUGLAS CLEGG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PUBLICATION CREDITS
You Come When I Call You
Praise for Douglas Clegg’s Fiction
YOU COME WHEN I CALL YOU
PROLOGUE
NOW
TWENTY YEARS LATER
PART ONE
OTHERS
CHAPTER ONE
Alison, Los Angeles
CHAPTER TWO
Sacrament of the Sacred Heart Church
CHAPTER THREE
Deadrats in New York
PART TWO
THE BUNGALOW
CHAPTER FOUR
Peter, Los Angeles
CHAPTER FIVE
THEN
PALMETTO CALIFORNIA, TWENTY YEARS BEFORE
PART THREE
THE SOURCE
CHAPTER SIX
When It First Arrived
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dog Days
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nitro
CHAPTER NINE
Valley of the Fallen
CHAPTER TEN
Morning Rituals
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Secrets of the Bone
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Magnificent Diner, Love at First Sight, and Joe Chandler
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Come Sundown
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Charlie Urquart and the Big O
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Summer Days and Nights
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
True Confessions
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Tapes and a Confession
NOW, TWENTY YEARS LATER
PART FOUR
LOS ANGELES
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Interrogator
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
Alison Runs a Fever
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Angel of the Desolation
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Trials of Marriage
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Day of Reckoning Is Upon Us
PART FIVE
WAKING DREAMS IN NEW YORK CITY
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Deadrats
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Charlie’s Living Room
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
That’s One
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
That’s Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
That’s Three
PART SIX
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN CATHEDRAL CITY, CALIFORNIA
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Nessie and Queenie
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Death of Nessie and the Life of Queenie
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Darkness
THEN
THE LAST OF PALMETTO, 1980
PART SEVEN
THE LOST
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Peter and Wendy
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Death of Wendy Swan
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Legend of Deadrats
PART EIGHT
THE SCORPION NEST
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Digging Up the Demon
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Last Day of Palmetto
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW
PART NINE
RETURNING WHAT WAS ONLY BORROWED
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Peter
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Alison Wonderland
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Stella and Nessie
PART TEN
THE CAVE-DWELLERS
CHAPTER FORTY
The Gathering
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Fear-Eaters
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Flickering
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Sacrament of the Sacred Heart
EPILOGUE
CONTACT DOUGLAS CLEGG
BOOKS BY DOUGLAS CLEGG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DISCLAIMER
PUBLICATION CREDITS
Goat Dance
GOAT DANCE
Prologue
PART ONE: DISTURBANCES IN THE FIELD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
PART TWO: THE TAINT
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
PART THREE: VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
CONTACT DOUGLAS CLEGG
BOOKS BY DOUGLAS CLEGG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PUBLICATION CREDITS
Praise for Douglas Clegg’s Fiction
“Clegg’s stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby.”
—Dean Koontz, New York Times bestselling author.
“Douglas Clegg has become the new star in horror fiction.”
—Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story and, with Stephen King, The Talisman
“Douglas Clegg is the best horror novelist of the post-Stephen King generation.”
— Bentley Little, USA Today bestselling author of The Haunted.
“Clegg gets high marks on the terror scale…”
—The Daily News (New York)
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
Douglas Clegg
ALKEMARA PRESS
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PROLOGUE
1
He awoke suddenly, brought to consciousness by a smell.
Another sense, too, something he'd acquired recently, nothing specific, more instinct than sense, something within him that told him his quarry was n
ear. It was as if he had radar for some of them—maybe if you know them, you sense them, or maybe (heh-heh, my insane friend) they sense you and send out unseen feelers to find you.
He reached for the mallet. It was still there, beneath the rags he'd used as a pillow. His whole body was soaked with sweat from whatever fever dream had been buzzing inside his head. He wiped the back of his neck with his left hand. His neck and legs were sore.
How long had he been asleep? Sleep was a problem. After all he'd been through, his body was wearing him down, forcing him to sleep too much. And he was supposed to be on watch. He had appointed himself the one who would not sleep and the last thing he remembered was he had been sitting up, listening for them, waiting for them. Somehow, he'd been tricked into falling asleep.
The man trusted no one now. He was careful not to wake the others as he rose up from the straw. Only three of them left. Only three. His side still ached from a recent wound. He managed to force the pain down deep into his flesh, to forever pretend that the pain was only a vestige of some past incarnation. Had to bite his lip, too, because when he finally stood, it felt as if his legs would buckle and he'd fall again. He held onto the edge of a wooden post that was draped with chains and hooks.
Blood had dried on one of the larger hooks, blood and some hair. Maybe some skin, too, matted with the hair and blood, or maybe he was so used to the gruel by now that he imagined it everywhere.
He glanced at the others. He didn't want to alarm them with what he was about to do. He was still not positive that any of them were who they claimed to be. The sleeping forms, wrapped in blankets and straw. They didn't have the smell to them, but he mistrusted his own senses more than anyone or anything.
He moved silently through the workroom, grabbing the tool belt from its peg on the cork wall. He could've taken a gun. There were plenty to go around, a veritable arsenal, but a gun never seemed to do the job right. What he had learned in the past twenty-four hours was that it was not enough just to do it and walk away—it took some time, it took patience, this kind of job. You had to watch them suffer before you knew they were truly dead.
He hefted a mallet in his right hand, swung it back and forth as if it were an old friend, and walked out the barn door. His palm was sweating around the mallet—he wondered when the mallet would become a part of him, melded into his flesh, until he was, himself, no longer a man, but a function of something higher—a tool of flesh and blood and wood and steel. He had never had much religious sense, but sometimes the voices told him what to do, sometimes he believed what they said. Sometimes he thought he was meant to be here, this time, this place, this hour.
The light was hazy, not dark yet, and he knew that if he was going to kill them it was going to have to be dark, because he wanted to look into their eyes and see the thing that he was killing—not them, but what was behind them, what gave them their inspiration. He tried not to think of them as Them, with a big T, because it was making him nervous as hell to even think about what they were, without adding the larger fear to it. What if I'm crazy? What if I'm one of those psycho killers who imagines that everyone else is a them?—a fleeting thought, through his brain; he ignored it.
It would've been almost impossible to find them in daylight, anyway, but at night, hell, they'd come to him. They'd approach as if they were supplicants coming to the altar and he'd just take them out.
Well, it wouldn't be that simple.
He'd probably get some fight out of at least one of them, maybe all. Who wanted to get his head bashed in, anyway? He knew he was crazy, thinking these things, but what was a man to do? He couldn't just let it all go, all the hurt, and give in. When you give in, they get you. When you give in, they take you over and do things to you, they get you over to their side, and then everything looks different.
The trees leaned, cowed by the strong wind, as if his arrival had made them bow down. But you're not God, remember that, a voice told him, you're just you, and you're going to look them in the eyes, one at a time, and you're going to have to bash them and spear them and they're going to know you, what you're thinking, they're going to have already half crawled into your brain, punching buttons as if you're a computer until they find out what's on your mind, and then they're going to do whatever they can to stop you.
He could smell one of them in the air—they stank, had that stink of humanity—the wind was icy, and the stink made him want to retch. He clutched the mallet more tightly. The worst of it was, they smelled like people, just like people who maybe haven't bathed in a while, the strong stink of human flesh.
In the grove, at the edge of the property, he thought he saw someone standing there.
He felt for the tool belt, for the screwdriver.
He'd gone hunting once, when he'd been young, and learned of a phenomenon where a hunter, looking for deer, sometimes took a shot at another human being because the hunter wanted to see a deer so badly that he actually mistook a man for a deer. Not just any man, either—it was often a friend.
It was the problem with them, they looked so much like anybody else. You couldn't really know for sure until you plunged the screwdriver into them. It wasn't simple, Life. It wasn't gray, either—things were definitely black and white, at least for him. Good and Evil, and you're either for us, or against us. The only way to live, now. Well, the only way to survive.
But what if he was wrong? He could look in their eyes, but if he didn't see what he was looking for, would he kill them anyway?
Maybe I'm just a madman, maybe I had a breakdown and the stress of the shit-hole world has dropped down on my shoulders. Maybe I'm just another Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy out to hammer everyone I'm paranoid about into the ground, bash their faces so I don't have to see their eyes staring at me, twist the old Phillips head number two into that sweet little place between their ribs where a nice plump heart's just waiting to get skewered.
Have to keep my mind on right here, right now, no veering off. They'd want that—you go careening off the edge of a cliff in your mind, and they got you. Once they get you, they put you where they want, and who knows what happens to you, how they hollow you out like a canoe and turn you inside out and then you're not who you think you are, oh, no, boys and girls, you're something altogether different and you look in the mirror but you don't see yourself, no no no, you see something else and then you want to break the mirror because of what they did to you, no thank you, ma'am, I ain't buying none of that.
The sky was darkening—not much after four, but getting dark fast. Never find them in their hiding place—have to wait, sometimes, until they come to you.
"Hey!" he shouted. Friendly-like, neighborly, putting the mallet behind his back a little so whoever was standing there wouldn't completely suspect him. They weren't too smart, these people, and when they were fresh, before they ripened, they had a little bit too much of what they used to have, so they weren't always the smartest things.
You are insane, the voice inside him said, this is just a dream, it has all been a dream, you've been drunk and abusing your wife and family and you drank a couple of six-packs of Rolling Rock and you went over the Edge.
(The voice in his head knew about the Edge.)
Someone came out from among the shadows of the grove. It wasn't an It or a Thing or a Them.
It was a boy. Straw-blond hair, pale skin, wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled down. On the front of the sweatshirt, which was blue, were the words: If Virginia Is for Lovers, Then West Virginia's for Us Decent Folks. He couldn't actually read the sweatshirt from that distance; he just knew what the words said because he'd bought the sweatshirt for the boy, himself, not two days before, thinking it was kind of funny.
He knew the boy.
He's one of them, though.
The boy smiled.
The man with the mallet stood motionless. His fingers felt numb.
The boy started running towards the man, shouting.
The man pulled the mallet from behind his bac
k.
When the boy reached him, the man took him in his free arm and brought the mallet to the side of the boy's head, ready to bash it.
You are insane, the voice inside said.
Am I? Well, go to hell, he told it.
He held the boy's head tight in his arm and stared down into those eyes as darkness blossomed all around them. He was looking for the light there, to see if he could see the boy's inspiration, if he could see anything that fueled the boy. If it still existed there.
Tears shone in the boy's eyes.
"Dad? Daddy?"
The man would only have a few seconds to perform the operation.
But he had to be sure.
He had come too far, from such a far-off land—the territory of sanity and reality—to lose it all in a moment's hesitation.
But he had to be absolutely sure that the boy was one of them before he carved into the boy's heart.
They were tricky that way, because you might slip up and stab one of your own kind—it wasn't like in the movies or books, where all it took was a good jab in the right place—it was bloody and you had to stab them over and over, until there was nothing left pumping—it was just like killing your own kind, only they weren't, they were another species, practically, and if you didn't hunt them down, they'd hunt you.
You'd be the deer in the forest to them.
The voice inside him said, You are tired of this, aren't you? You just want them to take you so you'll be one of them, so you won't have to fight anymore. You don't need to fight anymore. Everyone you love is gone, everything you've ever lived for, vanished. If you kill him, you kill yourself. Look at him, look at his face, his skin, his eyes, you were once like that, remember? When you were his age, in this very place, you set this in motion, you and your friends. What has brought you to this place? You have brought yourself. Who is this boy? He is you so many years ago, running through the groves, setting this in motion so that you will one day return only to pierce your son through the heart as a just sacrifice for what you and your kind have done.
And the man knew then that he was insane, because, although he was holding the boy and raising the mallet to strike, he saw what he thought was the light of day come up all around him, a color of light that he had never seen before, and the boy was not what he had seemed a second ago, but a creature of mutilation and putrefaction. The world became liquid all around them, until all light was like a river, and the man fumbled with the mallet and dropped it. He tried to reach for the screwdriver to press it into the boy's flesh before it was too late, but something grabbed his hand and pulled him through some kind of opening, as if the world were only a removable layer of skin.
Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set Page 1
